USA > New York > Dutchess County > Founding of the Episcopal church in Dutchess County, New York; an address delivered November 29, 1894 > Part 3
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Fishkill was then a more important place than Poughkeepsie. There were 502 out of 762 freeholders in Rombout Precinct whosigned the patriotic association papers of "the Sons of Lib- erty," Poughkeepsie had 213 out of 295, who professed thus to be patriots. The Fishkill women were not less patriotic, for they sold the confiscated tea of a New York alderman, stored here, for six shillings a pound for the benefit of the suffering soldiers in the barracks. The im- portance of Fishkill and vicinity increased during the war. So did the number of its pa- triots. There were fifty houses here in the space of two miles. The Committee of Safety had its meetings here. Here was the principal de- pot of the American army. Here were maga- zines and hospitals, workshops, the public de- pots of treasure and state papers and handsome large barracks yonder under the mountain and Here the troops were gathered,
on the plain.
sick and well and many destitute of clothing.
The hospitals overflowed.
There were 1768 sick
men in them at one time. Trinity church was filled and crowded with the suffering. The Presbyterian church, since destroyed by fire, wasalso temporarily used for them. The wounded from the battle of White Plains were laid along these streets: even the dead were piled here be- tween Trinity and the Dutch church building, and some were buried in the church-yard. The Van Wyck, now the "Wharton" house, was the headquarters of General Putnam, while Wash- ington's headquarters was five miles above at
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Col. John Brinckerhoff's mansion. But such il- lustrious Generals as Washington, Putnam, Steu- ben, Anthony Wayne, and La Fayette, who was long sick at Abram Brinckerhoff's house, were often sojourners with Putnam in this cottage still commanding an uninterrupted view of this lovely Cold Spring Gap and the Fishkill Valley. Here also John Bailey, in his cutler's shop, forged swords for some of these officers and even one for General Washington. Three earth-work forts in yonder gap protected the army and the sick, the Hudson was closed below the High- lands, the Fishkill Mountains were a solid ram- part to make this village a place of safety. Within a stone's throw of Trinity church, at the house of Isaac Van Wyck; Samuel Loudon, driven from New York, printed "The Fishkill Packet," the official army orders, and the first State Con- stitution of New York, adopted in 1777, and there he also kept the post office for the State of New York, with a mail by post riders from Boston on Wednesday evening, and from New London on Saturday evening.
The Provincial Convention met under this roof, and enrolled names to become famous in Amer- ican history, Philip Livingston, Lewis Morris, Pierre Van Cortlandt, Leonard Gansevoort, Gen- eral John Morris Scott, Robert Van Rensselaer, James Duncan, Robert R. Livingston, and John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States.
The Committee of Safety held their meetings here, watched and worked for the desperate cause of the Revolution. These arrested at last
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John Beardsley because he was a loyalist and a clergyman of that stripe was dangerous to them; they sent him therefore to New York. He had imperilled the support of his family, for he did not conceal his sentiments. His property was confiscated. His family, destitute as him- self, took refuge in New York City, Dec. 16, 1777, when it was in the possession of the British army. Some others who had been associated with him in Trinity Church must have gone with him. Among them a prominent commu- nicant Beverly Robinson, who afterward com- manded the loyal regiment of which Rev. Mr. Beardsley, was appointed Chaplain in 1778. After the war was ended he went with this reg- iment to the Province of New Brunswick, and with his family suffered many deprivations there. He erected a shelter at Parr in St. John's harbor where were five hundred refugees, and where he was the first minister. From there he made excursions up the river and became rector of an Episcopal Church in Maugerville in 1784-5, one of the four missions partly supported by the Government of the Province. His congregation was respectable and orderly and composed of people of different denominations who had been stripped of their all by the rebellion. He was much esteemed by this people, as a man of merit such as the missions needed. They made his situation comfortable. The Governor from a government grant of £2,000, gave £500 to aid in building a new church for his congregation at Maugerville, and another church at Burton, N.
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B., one of his out stations. He retained his connection with the regiment as chaplain, and extended his ministrations to other settlements. In 1787 he baptized 79 persons, and in one-half year of 1789 he baptized 144 persons, through his fidelity in visiting outlying posts and extreme points of his parish. He had 63 communicants in his church in 1802, and the Governor and his successors had a canopied pew constructed for them in the Maugerville church, the main build- ing of which was originally built 56 x 32 feet in size.
Here he remained more than 17 years, till in- capacitated by age, he retired on half pay as chaplain in 1802, to Kingston, in that Province, and died there on his birth-day in 1810,* at the age of 78 years.
Of Mr. Beardsley's sons there were many de- scendants living on the St. John's River. One of them, Bartholomew Crannel, became a dis- tinguished lawyer and Chief Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and a member of several Pro- vincial Assemblies, He died in 1855. Another graduating from Union College New York, was a Judge in Michigan, and afterward an ordained clergyman of the Episcopal Church, and died at Waverly, N. Y., in January, 1863. Another son died while a member of the Provincial Assembly of New Brunswick. Thus God showed covenant mercies unto the third generation to this mis- sionary rector of Trinity and Christ Churches, who was faithful to his trusts.
*The Church of England in New Brunswick, page 79.
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In the first General Convention of 1785 there was present from Dutchess County, Mr. John Davis. In the convention of 1787, Elbert Wil- let, Jr., sat as a representative of Trinity Church, Fishkills. In the convention of 1779 were the Rev. Mr. Van Dyck of Poughkeepsie, rector of Christ Church and Trinity Church Fishkills, and Mr. Peter Mesier as delegate.
A strange link unites the history of Trinity Church with a tragic event of two hundred and fifty years ago, in the life of one who may have been a worshiper in the first services of Trinity Church, conducted by the Rev. Samuel Seabury. A silver flagon stands on our altar, given by an eminent Warden of Trinity church in 1820, Gulian C. Ver Planck, Esq., in memorial of one of the life guards of the Prince of Orange, afterwards King William III of England, who died with an unblemished reputation in Fishkill at the very advanced age of one hundred and twenty-eight years. A current notice of his death in the Gen- tleman's Magazine, published in London, in the issue of March, 1765, reads thus, in the volume I hold in my hand.
"Mr. Edgelbert Hoff died at Fishkill near New York aged 128. He was born in Norway, and could remember that he was a lad driving a team when the news was brought to his country that King Charles the first had been beheaded. He served as a soldier under the Prince of Orange in the time of James the second."
So the fellowship of Trinity Church runs back not only to the Church of England under the
CHRIST CHURCH, POUGHKEEPSIE, 1893.
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House of Stuarts, but by other successive links to the chain through France and Ephesus, that binds us to the Apostles and brings us to the touch of our Lord Himself, when he said " Re- ceive ye the Holy Ghost."
We have at considerable length and detail on this occasion regarded the planting and early training of this now wide-spreading vine of the Episcopal Church in Dutchess County. It would take much longer time to narrate what came of this planting, in the ministry of nineteen rectors in Trinity Church in 140 years, with a record of frequent changes and vacancies in the rector- ship, unfavorable to its best growth and faithful- ness.
But some names among these have been hon- orably known in education, in the Church and in literature, like the Right Reverend Philander Chase, S. T. D., LL. D., Bishop of Ohio, from 1819 to 1831, the presiding Bishop of the Amer- ican Church from 1843 to 1852. He founded and was President of the Theological Seminary and Kenyon College Gambier, Ohio, and also Jubilee college in Illinois. He was elected Bis- hop of Illinois in 1835, and organized the work of that diocese which was under him admitted to union with the General Convention.
There were also noted classical scholars and authors, the Rev. Christian F. Cruse, D. D., of whom Dr. Muhlenberg said in a sense of his own bereavement of such companionship, "A philosopher, a saint and a sage has passed away;" Gulian C. Ver Planck, Esq., a Warden at the
4c
same time of Trinity Church in New York, while holding that office here, best known in his literary association with Washington Irving, and as one of the foremost American Shakes- pearian scholars and critics of his time; the Rev. F. W. Shelton, an author of fine literary taste and imagination; the lamented J. H. Ho- bart, D. D., a former minister of Trinity Church, New York. To these could be added the names of other devout ministers like the Rev. William B. Thomas who was rector in the first quarter of the present century, and the Rev. John Brown who made your centennial address; and those whom you remember to have heard of or known and loved for their fidelity and churchmanship in later years. Rev. R. B. Van Kleeck, D. D., and the Rev. John R. Livingston.
But the branches of this vine have multiplied beyond the original stock to twenty-nine churches in Dutchess County,-so many that they cannot be here named. Christ Church of Poughkeepsie, one of the most important in the great diocese of New York, was nearly a twin planting, and nurtured by the same ministry as Trinity for nearly fifty years; Zion Church of Wappingers Falls, of which Peter Mesier long a Warden of Trinity. was one of the founders; St. Stephen's College and other Institutions are indeed its fruitful shoots. Eminent lawyers, doctors, teach- ers and ministers, and goodly men and women in every station have been the rich clusters of this vine in Dutchess County. But with all these, it is with most becoming congratulations we can
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name two of the most distinguished Bishops of the Church, the Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of New York from 1854 to 1887, and the Rt. Rev. Alonzo Potter, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of Pennsylvania from 1845 to 1865, both brothers born in Beekman, now La Grange, Dutchess County, and the son of the latter our own be- loved and venerated Bishop Henry Codman Potter, D. D., L L. D., who also originated in the precinct included within the first missionary limits of Trinity Church, Fishkill.
Some of the names above mentioned are en- graven in our church :- yard; some in the military or civic records of our country. Others are for- gotten who were equally God-fearing and have passed to their reward. Some are still bearing life's burdens and toiling in the heat of the day. But in all its history past and present, the pur- pose and prayer of Trinity Church finds expres- sion in the words now to stand henceforth over this vestibule, where we enter for worship:
PRO DEO ET PATRIA.
42 RECTORS OF TRINITY CHURCH. Rev. Samuel Seabury, M. A., Missionary, 1855 to 1761.
Rev. John Beardsley, 1766 to 1778.
Rev. Henry Van Dyck, Nov. 10, 1790.
Rev. Philander Chase, Dec. 7, 1799 to Nov. 1 805.
Rev. Barzillai Buckley, 1807 to 1809.
Rev. John Brown, Sept, 28, 1812 to Dec. 6, 1815.
Rev. P. S. Ten Broech, Dec. 15, 1816 to 1818. Rev. William B. Thomas, Dec. 25, 1821 to 1827.
Rev. R. B. Van Kleeck, Aug. 1, 1833 to 1835.
Rev. J. L. Watson, Nov. 9, 1835 to 1836.
Rev. C. A. Foster, Sept. 1, 1837 to 1838. Rev. R. L. Burnham, Feb. 1, 1838 to 1841. Rev. R. Shaw, April 2, 1841 to 1842.
Rev. W. H. Hart, June 11, 1843 to 1845. Rev. C. F. Cruse, April 1, 1846 to 1851. Rev. F. W. Shelton, Nov. 2, 1852 to 1854. Rev. J. R. Livingston, Aug. 9, 1855 to 1878. Rev. J. H. Hobart, May 29, 1879 to 1889. Rev. J. M. Chew, 1889 to 1891.
Rev. H. O. Ladd, 1891.
OFFICERS OF TRINITY CHURCH, 1894-5. Rector, Rev. Horatio Oliver Ladd, M. A. Wardens, Adriance Bartow, Samuel Verplanck.
Vestrymen, Oliver W. Barnes,
Sylvanus M. Davidson, Clerk and Treasurer, John D. Fouquet, William T. Blodgett.
TRINITY CHURCH, FISHKILL, N. Y., 1894.
C
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TRUSTEES.
WHEN FIRST ELECTED.
Duncan, James
Original, 1767.
Southard, Richard
Cooke, John
1785. -
Halstead, John
Terboss, Daniel
Cooper, Jeremiah
66
Snyder, Benjamin
Green, Jeremiah
Pine, Philip
Cooper, James
..
Halstead, Jonas
Davis, Richard
Emott, William
Noxon, Robert
Prechard, James
Balding, Isaac Jr.
66
Badger, Ebenezer
Mesier, Peter
1786.
Willett, Elbert Jr.
Alger, William B.
Van Voorhis, Jacob
1789.
Mills, Robert
66
Pine, Sylvanus
1793.
Southard, John R.
1794.
WARDENS.
WHEN FIRST ELECTLD. 1771.
Terbos, Jacobus
66
Halstead. John
1785. 66
Terbos, Daniel
Mesier, Peter
1796. 66
Cooper, James
Ver Planck, Daniel C.
1802.
Vail, Isaac
Green, Joseph
44
Mesier, Matthew
1804.
Street, Greenleaf
1834.
Bartow, William A.
1839.
Ver Planck, Gulian C.
1846.
Cotheal, Isaac E.
1870.
Bartow, Alexander
1871.
Bartow, Adriance
1877.
Ver Planck, Samuel
1885.
VESTRYMEN.
WHEN FIRST ELECTED.
Southard, Zebulon
1771.
Cary, Joseph
Halstead, John
Pyre, Thomas
Carmin, John T.
1796.
Green, Jeremiah
Snider, Benjamin
Southard, John R.
Mills, Robert
Street, Greenleaf
66
. Ver Planck, Daniel C.
1797
Thorn, Obadiah
66
Gorwis, John F.
66
Poyar, Thomas
1798.
Wood, James
Rogers, Benjamin
1800.
Budd, Gilbert
1801.
Mesier, Matthew
Budd. Underhill
Wetmore, Abraham
1802.
White, John
Long, Thomas C.
1804.
Pine, Sylvanus
1808.
Thorne, Benjamin
1811.
66
Poyar, Thomas
Cooper, Joseph
45
Southard, Richard D. Allen, William
1813.
Weeks, Abraham
Mesier, Abraham
1817.
Hatch, Abijah S.
1819.
Lampson, Nathaniel
1820.
Oppie, James W.
1823.
- Golet, Thomas B.
1824.
Uhl, John
1825.
Shurman W.
1828.
Ver Planck, James Delancey
1831.
Weeks, Samuel
Mesier, Henry
1832.
Rogers, Elijah
1833.
Monfort, James P.
1834.
Rogers, Absolam
66
Carman, Joshua
Fenn, James M.
1835.
Burroughs. Robert
Ladue, Thomas
Ver Planck, Gulian C.
1836.
Street, George S.
Ver Planck, Willian
1838.
Addington W.
Styles, Curtis
1839.
Fowler, Charles
1840.
Mum, Henry
1845.
Ver Planck, Samuel
Bartow, William
1846.
Jackson, Charles A.
Plum, Charles
1851.
Bartow, George A.
1855.
Bartow, Charles E.
Boyce, Dewitt
Bartow, Alexander
1857.
46
Cotheal, Isaac E. Soaman, William
1858. 6
Aymar, Benjamin
1860.
Aymar, Edmund B.
1861. 1865.
Verplanck, W. S.
Bartow, Charles A.
Varick, C.
46
Bartow, Adriance
1866.
Bartow, C, E.
1869.
Fouquet, J. D.
Barnes, Oliver W.
1870.
Cotheal, Henry L.
Conklin, W. J.
1872.
Sleight, Frank
Johnston, Robert
1874.
Andrews, James Watson
1876.
Wood, Isaac
1877.
Bartow, Du Bois
1878.
Gildersleeve, Isaac B.
Bartow, Moncure
1879.
Verplanck, Samuel
1881.
Davidson, S. M.
1884.
Marsh, R. H.
1885.
Blodgett, William T.
1894.
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